PHS students take their best shots

Last weekend, the PHS Sportsman’s Club held its fall trap shoot at Baker Park in Kewanee.

Fourteen students and a couple of parents participated in this yearly event. They started out on the trap range and then migrated over to the skeet area.

In the boys’ division, the three top shooters ended up being Cordell Kunkel, Nick Rolando and Ryan Grieff. Rolando ended up with the top score of 21/25 while Kunkel was close behind with a 20/25. Trevor Bickett was happy to beat his dad, Shannon, by one bird.

In the ladies division, Brooke Ford was the top shooter with a 16/25. In her competition, she edged out her mother, Bobbi Jo Evans, and Megan Noll.

When they moved over to the skeet range, they found it to be a little tougher. Again, Rolando was the top scorer with Kunkel and Grieff coming in second and third, respectively.

We had a beautiful day to shoot, and all the students and parents had a great time. We look forward to next spring when we will plan to return there for the spring shootout.

At the beginning of October, the Grieff family headed out to the timber of Grandpa’s farm for the youth deer season. Father Gregg and his family have been outdoorsmen for several years with a special interest in whitetails. This year, they were joined by Sara, the youngest of their clan, who is a seventh-grader at Logan.

They got there about 4:30 p.m. and climbed into their deer stand. During the next two hours, they waited patiently for some action but only saw 4 or 5 does wandering out in the field.

Then Sara said, “Dad, there’s a doe.”

They waited as the doe kept walking in their direction followed by a buck. When it wandered up to about 25 yards and stopped, Sara took aim and shot. The deer dropped and then got up and walked into the timber, where it crashed and fell. When they got out of the stand and walked over to where they had last heard it, the deer was down.

Her dad said Sara was shaking all over and was so excited that she had harvested her first deer. It was a six-point buck that Gregg estimated at 150 pounds.

A little side note was that Sara had broken her arm about a month earlier. She had a cast on her left arm but she didn’t want to missed her first season, so she and her brother, Ryan, had gone out the week before to make sure she could handle the shotgun properly. Congratulations on your first buck, Sara.

• Inland trout season opened at the Hennepin Canal Parkway last Saturday, and even though there were fewer people than last year, most fishermen seemed to fare pretty well. It will stay open all this week until most of the trout are caught.

• See you at the annual D.U. banquet this Saturday at the Metro Center. Doors open at 5:30 p.m., but you must have advanced tickets. Call Erik Ellberg (815-876-6659), Ben Dzurisin (815-866-4636) or Brett Brown (815-872-0884).

Lee Wahlgren is the BCR Outdoor Columnist. Contact him at pdub52@gmail.com